All Quotes By Tag: Writing
“Don’t write so that you can be understood, write so that you can’t be misunderstood.”
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“Writing is the supreme solace.”
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“You write your books. You scatter your seeds. Rats might eat them, or they might rot. In California, some seeds lie dormant for decades because they only germinate after fire, and sometimes the burned landscape blooms most lavishly.”
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“At last I understood that the way over, or through this dilemma, the unease at writing about ‘petty personal problems’ was to recognize that nothing is personal, in the sense that it is uniquely one’s own. Writing about oneself, one is writing about others, since your problems, pains, pleasures, emotions—and your extraordinary and remarkable ideas—can’t be yours alone. […] Growing up is after all only the understanding that one’s unique and incredible experience is what everyone shares.”
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“I held out my book. It was precious to me, as were all the things I’d written; even where I despised their inadequacy there was not one I would disown. Each tore its way from my entrails. Each had shortened my life, killed me with its own special little death.”
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“Assuming you can write clear English sentences, give up all worry about communication. If you want to communicate, use the telephone.”
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“…I have to write to discover what I am doing. Like the old lady, I don’t know so well what I think until I see what I say; then I have to say it again.”
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“Over the years I have forged intimate familial ties with these characters, who are reflections of a portion of myself. Consequently, even a character who appeared only once in a short story waits now in the wings, concealed by the curtain, for his next appearance on-stage. Not one of them has ever broken free of his familial ties with me and disappeared for ever – at least, not within the confines of my heart.”
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“Everything in art depends on execution: the story of a louse can be as beautiful as the story of Alexander. You must write according to your feelings, be sure those feelings are true, and let everything else go hang. When a line is good it ceases to belong to any school. A line of prose must be as immutable as a line of poetry.”
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“Writers are always anxious, always on the run–from the telephone, from responsibilities, from the distractions of the world.”
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“The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.”
“It can be depressing when no one takes interest, and a lack of response makes the writer question why they’re writing at all. To have one’s writing rejected is like you, yourself, are being rejected. ”
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“Don’t believe in everything that is written. Not everything that is written is true”
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“It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass.”
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“The best life for a writer is the life which helps him write the best books he can.”